


Impressionism

by Dance_Elle_Dance



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Drama, Dreams, F/M, Post-Movie(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dance_Elle_Dance/pseuds/Dance_Elle_Dance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite his lack of knowledge on the sucessful Inception, Robert Fischer dreams of a slim brunette woman who makes his unconsciousness preferable to his reality. (Originally posted on 1/16/11.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impressionism

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post of my first FischerAriadne, which is probably my favorite pairing in the fandom, next to CobbAriadne and EamesArthur. This is probably one of my favorite pieces I've written. Please enjoy!

She stands in front of him, clear as day. Almost as if she's real.

She's not, he knows by now - nothing this perfect could be real - and he sighs.

Fischer gazes at her as if he is in a daze. His eyes are slightly unfocused, however he knows it is her. The familiar figure has her back toward him, her hands holding something that looks like a sketchpad. He watches her wearily, wondering what she is about to do next. He almost scoffs at himself - the very image of him, waiting on a dream figure to act as if she were real... It's comical, to say the least.

"Hello, Robert."

He starts slightly, his eyes widening at her awareness. He must have been louder than he thought - either that or this woman had some unnerving skill he isn't aware of. Still, he croaks out, "Hey..."

"I should feel honored, I guess," she starts, "being the star of your dreams every night. At least you're a gentlemen. I know plenty of others who wouldn't be so... _considerate_ when it comes to women. _Especially_ in their dreams."

Fischer just stares at her blankly, his mouth open like some kind of fish. No words come to the surface, and there is a light scratching sound coming from the sketchpad in her hands. He notices that her hand is moving, mapping out something or another in the architecture around her. She likes to do that, his confidante in unconsciousness, and often he gets to see what she writes, draws.

The dream figure turns, and her face is as radiant as ever. Bright, intelligent brown eyes, clear skin, slender figure, long and wavy brown hair...

She's the picture of perfection in this place, and she doesn't even seem to notice it.

"I do question your wardrobe choices for me, however." She motions to the flowing yellow sundress she wears. "I'm not a dress-type of gal. Or yellow, for that matter." She looks at him with friendly eyes, though, and he knows that she isn't all that serious about it.

Fischer looks at her like she's the star of this whole thing, which she is. This woman walks over to the bench and sits on it, looking over at the buildings that surround them. They are in some kind of Parisian landscape, and he just knows she relishes drawing it. _But she can't, can she? She's just a dream figure...a projection._

"Aren't you going to sit down?" she remarks in that cheeky way of hers, motioning to the empty space on her bench.

He gapes at her, again, realizing what a fool he must look, and then moves to her, sitting gingerly down in the space beside her.

"What are you drawing today?"

She shows him the sketchpad, and he marvels at what skill it must take to draw something like that. The sketch is of the building in front of them, with several refinements to its grand arches and sweeping hallways. A staircase has been added, as if she'd been inside the building even while he was awake, as if she were somehow alive in his own mind. She beams at his speechlessness, and takes the paper back, continuing to draw on it.

"You amaze me."

She scoffs, her eyes never leaving her paper. "Technically, it's _you_ amazing _yourself_. I'm just a figment of your subconscious."

She seems awfully self-aware for a projection. Awfully human and real and _perfect_. Maybe that was why Fischer always had trouble distinguishing her from actual people. And even though she's supposedly just a "figment," he can't help but wonder if she was once something real. Something that had wedged in the back of his mind. Someone residual from a time long ago.

Swallowing heavily, he only watches her. Throughout the dream, this is what he does. He studies her, the slender curve of her neck, the graceful way she carries herself, her fingers holding the pencil against the paper in front of her.

The woman looks at him finally, after what only seems like a minute, and says, "It's time to wake up, Robert."

Reluctantly, he is sucked back into consciousness.

\---

The beeping of the alarm clock was what had awoken him. He slams his fist down on the button along the top of the device and makes his way out of his bed. Fischer tugs his pajama bottoms up from where they hang loosely on his slim hips and stumbles from out of his room, down the hall, and into the kitchen.

The next few hours are a blur - all he knows is that somehow he gets dressed and makes his way over to his office.

As he sits in his chair, hands folded underneath his chin, staring forward, he isn't surprised by the lackluster feeling in the center of his chest. There is no zest here, no liveliness.

Fischer wonders when he started preferring his dream world to reality.

\---

"Welcome back."

Fischer is standing on the beach now, dressed in the appropriate attire of board shorts and a t-shirt. Surprisingly casual for him. The woman is standing at his side now, and she is staring off at some cruise liner sailing toward the dock near them. The bustling city above them is quiet, and he finds himself looking over to the brunette wonder, his eyes betraying nothing of his feelings for her.

_She's just apart of the dream. Nothing more. It's stupid to get attached._

"At least you dressed me better this time," she says, referencing her attire - his eyes glance at the capri pants and the green top that hugs her in just the right way, and agrees silently. Her bare feet dig into the sand in a fidgety gesture, her sketchpad nowhere to be seen.

"You're not drawing?"

"Eh, it's the beach. I'll have time to draw later."

Fischer smiles at her, and then runs a hand through his wind-blown hair.

"I'm going to design one of those," she says. "One of those cruise liners. It'll look better than the _Titanic_."

"And how would you know how that looks?"

"I've seen pictures."

Fischer scoffs. "You've seen pictures."

"Well, _you_ have. So I've seen them by default."

He smiles.

\---

"You're going to have to hire a new secretary soon," one of his workers tells him. "After you fired the last one..."

Fischer looks at him as if he's grown another head - he'd been thinking of the vexing woman in his dreams for a little over an hour now, wondering why she seemed so poignant to him, and finding no answers. He only stares at the man in front of him, tuning the drone of his voice out, and searching for something that he knows he can't find here.

In response, he only says, "Alright."

More emotion than that is something that he cannot seem to dredge up nowadays.

\---

They're horseback riding in the next dream he has.

She's as radiant as ever, on the back of a strong brown horse, riding alongside him. There's a baseball cap planted securely on her head, twisted backwards, and he watches the creamy white of her legs around the horse every now and then.

Her laughter is the most brilliant sound he's ever heard. Her smile is full of life. Her voice is lively and something that he can't ignore even if he tried.

He rounds the corner on his horse - a gorgeous, dark creature - and stops just beneath a large, sweeping tree, shading him from the sun. She comes up beside him and stops her horse expertly by tugging the reins.

"Something wrong?" she asks, cocking her head to the side like an owl.

Fischer stares at her for a moment, taking in the sight of her, drinking it in, as if he could be able to re-create her as soon as the inevitable came. As soon as he... _woke up_. A shiver trailed down his spine at that thought - waking up was the last thing he wanted to do at this moment.

"Nothing," he replies, "nothing at all."

\---

Women are pouring in through his doors, person after person. Even a few men have applied to become his new secretary, but he doesn't like the notion of anyone working for him, let alone someone who could very well be a shark only after a pay raise.

These women are vapid. Uninteresting. He could count the number of truly qualified applicants on one hand, but even those, he rejects like they were the same as the bottle blonde, gum-smacking, disrespectful people that had entered his office just moments before.

Each one of them was turned down, and he has yet to find one to do the job.

He doesn't know what's wrong with him.

\---

In his dreams, he is focused.

There is nothing dull about the dream world he escapes to. Nothing dull about the magnificent landscapes and different terrains he is able to conjure up in the recesses of his mind.

Nothing dull about the lovely brunette walking beside him right now.

People often say that dreams are better than reality - they are true. The phrase "wildest dreams" didn't come up from nothing. Dreams speak of something that cannot be obtained. Dreams speak of an ideal. Maybe that was what this girl is - an ideal. Because she truly seems perfect in every way. She seems the perfect compliment to him, in her ways of speaking, in her demeanor, her intelligence...

He fights a sigh as they walk into the park. He can't remember when he first started to dream about her - maybe a few days after his father died. She popped up, all snark and witty comebacks, and helped him through the most difficult time in his life. Strange how something from a dream helped him better than any of the real people in his life.

They both sit down on a park bench, shaded by a few trees. The sun is bright, but the weather is not stifling as it should be. It is a perfect mixture of cool and heat, Fischer's favorite type of weather. He sees her smile to herself and lean her head back, enjoying the pleasant conditions.

"I love you."

She snickers at this. "You don't."

"How..."

"Do you even know my name?"

Fischer stares at her as he feels the world coming apart around him. He's about to wake up, he knows he is.

"That's what I thought," she continues. She looks up at him now, a knowing smile on her lips, "Time for your day to start, Robert."

\---

He awakens seconds later, sweating and clenching his chest for some odd reason. His heart is beating frantically.

Fischer wasn't sure what happened. He didn't know why he had to go and say that - she wasn't even _real_ , and he was telling her that he...that he... He couldn't even finish the thought. His former notions of what had been defined as pathetic had been completely overturned - _he_ was now the most pathetic creature in this universe. He couldn't even comprehend how stupid he was being. How...immature.

He takes a cold shower later, as if that would relieve the tension in his shoulders, and unclog his mind.

He almost wishes that the icy spray would wash _her_ away, too.

\---

Fischer goes on a date later that evening.

It had never been hard for him to get women to go out with him, and this one was no exception. She was gorgeous by anyone's standards. Tall, busty, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, tanned skin, all-American. There was nothing wrong with her in the least, but something was just... _lacking_.

He couldn't help but imagine the light color of her hair darkening, her sky-colored eyes changing into what looked like the shade of coffee.

He couldn't help but imagine _her_.

And he couldn't help but berate himself because _she isn't real_.

\---

His dreams are shockingly empty for the next few nights. There is no sign of the lovely brunette anywhere, and he wonders if he has scared her off somehow, though he knows that very notion is impossible.

All he does in his dreams now is wait.

Wait for some sign of her, wait for something to signal what happened.

Was it his stupidly blatant confession? He fears that is the case.

Fischer just wanders in his dreams now, goes to places that he has shared with the girl that inhabits his dreams. The beach, the park, the place where they rode horses so freely.

He goes wishing to see something...feel something that lets him know that she wasn't just a dream figure.

The panging in his chest suggests the truth.

\---

"Mr. Fischer, we have someone here to see you."

He looks up at the man that has addressed him and sees that he is looking at him with some kind of reprieve in his tone. Fischer ignores it and moves his hand as if motioning whoever it is into his office. He doesn't look up, even as he hears the faint footfalls of someone of slight stature, not even as he hears the breathy conversations between the new person and his own worker.

"I'll leave you two to talk about it."

There is an acknowledgement and the man leaves the room, his heavy footsteps soon muffled by the shutting of the door.

Fischer doesn't look up, not even as the girl steps up so she is so close to his desk that he can see her feet, encased in some kind of flat-heeled shoe. Legs, pale and milky white stare greet his gaze - an attractive pair of legs, he decides.

"Here for the secretary interview?" Fischer asks unconcernedly. He has been way off of his game ever since his dream woman has been leaving him out to dry these days. If only he could see her face, hear her voice. _And people wonder if I'm going insane,_ he thinks to himself, an eerie sort of clarity in his mind.

"No, I'm here because apparently you need an architect."

Fischer stops dead, his pen stops moving against paper, his breathing halts in his chest, he even forgets to blink. The sound of that voice, the very cadence of it is enough to send shivers down his back, and - it turns out - to stop his bodily movements in mid-sequence. He is almost frightened to look up, as if that would be the very pinnacle of foolish fantasy - if she were to appear alive in front of him. He knows this itself isn't a dream, because if it was, then it wouldn't nearly be as dull.

He chokes down a breath and sets his pencil on the desk. Fischer puts his fears behind him and looks up.

And there she is.

In all her glory, she stands in front of him, holding a notepad and a sketching pencil. Her hair is tied back into a low ponytail, waving slightly out around her cheeks. Her big, doe-like, brown eyes stare at him with unmasked intelligence. Her petite frame is the same as ever, clothed in just a simple lavender blouse and a pair of dark, well-fitted jeans.

It's _her_.

The dream, as crazy as it was, has become reality.

"Cat got your tongue, Mr. Fischer?"

He shakes his head as if to rid the sluggishness in his mind, but he can't force himself to get past this. A million questions race through his head, none of them rational.

"No, no..." he says, motioning at a chair. "Please, sit down."

She does.

"And...what are you here for?" Fischer asks, though he omits the question about _how_ that wants to spring forth from him.

"Architect. Your company needs one." No-nonsense. He likes that. He has always liked that.

"And they sent you."

She nods. "They think I'm one of the best."

"Are you?"

A light smirk forms across her lips, and he fights the urge to grab that angelic face in front of him and kiss her. "Sure."

He laughs at that, completely forgetting his current dilemma. But, of course, if he were to say he had been dreaming about her for the past few months, he'd be sure to get a restraining order _and_ lose them a promising architect. So Fischer shakes his head and looks down to the sketchbook that she has opened.

She shows him a few of the things she has drawn. They would look excellent as buildings for his new company. He watches as she turns each page, completely invested in everything she's doing, almost like if he does one wrong thing, she'd be taken away from him as she had been before.

The meeting draws to a close, and he says he'd hire her. Which shouldn't be a surprise - he'd lost her once, and he had no intention of doing so again.

As she heads to the door, closing her notebook in the process, he finds himself calling out to her. A question that he had never thought to ask in his dreams suddenly lifts out of his mouth and crosses the space between them.

"What's your name?"

The brunette turns and smiles. "Ariadne."

She opens the door and moves through it, graceful despite her small stature. Fischer leans back in his chair, floored by the whole situation, and buzzing from excitement.

 _Everything has come full-circle,_ he thinks briefly, as her name is the only other thing on his mind.


End file.
